Time to Turn Home

Has our president been devoting more time to the affairs of gophers on the fairway than to his own country? This question arises from President Bush's recent promise to devote one hour of each working day to domestic policy.

The president's average sleeping time is not public information, so one can only speculate as to how much of his waking hours this period constitutes. To judge by leaders like Margaret Thatcher and Boris Yeltsin, fabled for their four-hour nights, one hour per day would be equivalent to 5 percent of possible productive time. This period is significantly less than that required to complete a game of golf. If our president sleeps more than four hours, the discrepancy becomes even more alarming.

It therefore comes as no surprise that when George H. W. Bush talks about his achievements, he talks about foreign policy. His foreign policy reaches into every continent and every capitalist nation in the world. Most of these policies are supposedly designed to help the American economy. What the president fails to realize is that his efforts would have been more easily implemented if they had begun and ended at home.

According to Baker Professor of Economics Martin S. Feldstein '61, a framer of the last two administrations' economic policies, industrial regulation and protectionism are detrimental to the free-market system and thus decrease economic activity. However, the difficulties that Eastern European countries are having in creating a free market would indicate that it is a sort of perpetual motion machine. The question, even for the hundreds of "Future Economic Policy Gurus"--the Economics Department's name for future Marty Feldsteins--who swallow his supply-side gospel each week, is how to start it.

Everyone is looking for the next Franklin D. Roosevelt '04. After 20 years of short-term presidents who only seem to work towards the next election, voters want someone who will bail them out of a serious depression.

The favored "recession" is too moderate a word to describe this country's situation, and our fearless leader would not even use the "r-word" until last year. While even during the Great Depression, the United States experienced economic growth, the last two years have shown the first period of overall economic decline on record.

Isolationism, a word with an ugly ring for most international businesspeople and freemarketeers, was Roosevelt's answer to the Depression. It can also be the answer for whomever wins the next presidential term.

Roosevelt used a Hundred Days' congressional session, in which several pieces of regulatory and reparatory legislation were passed. To make isolationism effective, a leader must have the resolve to leave the romantic world of hegemonic superpowers and international summits in order to make a sincere attempt to jump-start his or her own nation.

The question is whether any of our prospective leaders have the will to turn inward and concentrate efforts at home to do today what Roosevelt did 60 years ago.

For Gov. Bill Clinton, such action would be simple and tantalizing. With the assistance of a Democratic Congress, he would be on his way to becoming a modern-day picture of governmental responsiveness and efficiency.

However, Congressional Democrats, long the defenders of liberal values in Washington, might not be too receptive to a candidate whose campaign has been moving consistently closer to the center. Clinton might also find that lobbying 535 congressional representatives takes significantly more effort than calling up a few personal friends in the Arkansas State Legislature. In any case, the nation would have to wait until January to see which path he would take.

For George Bush, a decision to emulate a figure whom other members of his party have called a socialist would be difficult at best. If elected to a second term, he might pursue action as soon as November. If defeated, Bush could also attempt to force legislation through Congress as a lame duck. It seems more likely, though, that he would do his best to help out his friends in business before re-entering private life.

Ross Perot, who at this point seems unlikely to be elected, would have to wait until January to wrestle with a Congress in which he has few supporters. However, Perot seems most apt to adopt an isolationist stance, since the movement to elect him is largely based on populist values.

No matter how the election is decided, the fact remains that indirect attempts to help the economy through foreign policy will only preserve the nation in its current depleted state. During the first debate among presidential candidates, President Bush said that his decision to ship 72 F-15 fighters to Saudi Arabia would create jobs. On the contrary, that move will only serve to preserve the jobs of the thousands of men and women who build that plane.

No one disputes that new jobs infuse money into all areas of the civilian economy. To create new jobs, the country needs the equivalent of Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps, a huge body of workers paid by the government to build the infrastructure to which Ross Perot constantly refers.

An isolationist national policy would allow for the creation of a similar organization, perhaps at the cost of an across-the-board cut of foreign aid. This method would seem to be the best way of bringing American dollars back home, regardless of President Bush's existing foreign trade plans.

Those who consider foreign policy to be more than 50 percent of the chief executive's job might disagree. After all, as many argue, a supposedly brilliant man like Roosevelt might have done something about the onrush of war in Europe had he not been so wrapped up in domestic affairs. However, as can be seen from the fact that patriotism has become a major issue in a presidential election, our leader must be committed to minister to his own people first.